


shattered

by Anonymous



Series: apostasy [1]
Category: Elsword (Video Game)
Genre: Altered Mental States, Angst, Cannibalism, Gen, Gore, Hallucinations, Loss of Faith, Lovecraftian, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-22
Updated: 2017-02-22
Packaged: 2018-09-26 07:44:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9874106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: There is only the Void.Apostasia oneshot





	

Ain drifts endlessly.

The Void is vast, the darkness and chaos stretching farther than the human mind could ever comprehend. Ain once flew from one listless platform to the farthest he could reach. An exercise in madness, if there ever was one.

He floated above and below time and space and everything in between. The Void is vast, and it eats the weak and spits the mangled bones of the unworthy. The Void sees all, knows all.

The Void is… hungry.

Ain could feel its ravenous appetite, pressing against the back of his skull, staccato beat of throbbing hearts on the verge of death. It pulls Ain to follow where there is food, where there is nourishment. Whispers in a thousand tongues pulls Ain to a great many points in time, where the roads diverge and where Ain could see and hear and _ know _ what he is in a world without the Void.

He does not approach his alternate selves. White-hot rage pumping beneath his veins, he stills his hands and only watches, hating and yearning a life without the Void.

However….

The Void rewards those that are worthy.

Ain tries to rid himself of these thoughts, of the chaos seeping beneath his skin like a parasitic growth. Except the Void laughs at his futility, its jeers echoing inside his skull, follows him to his dreams.

_ You could be great _ .

The whispers said once, as Ain shuddered. In pleasure or in fear, Ain knew not.

His hands were sticky and wet, blood and oil up to his elbows. A white-haired boy is looking at him, and Ain could not remember the boy’s name. There are impressions of a manic grin and fevered nights spent researching. Only searching. He had no idea what to search for.

The boy gasps, staring at him with betrayal, but Ain could not have possibly betrayed him. The Void croons in approval.

He stares at his handiwork, transfixed. The boy's heart is pink and red, the muscle beating to an erratic tune. Veins were the only thing still attached to the boy's torso, and Ain wondered what it would be like to squeeze it

The boy gasps, almost falls to his knees, but grips Ain’s arms instead. Nails dig into Ain’s arms, drags against his skin, red blooming in the paleness.

“Let go,” the boy grits out, blood dripping down his mouth. It was stark and bright against his skin. “Let go.”

Ain tilts his head. He does not let go.

The boy dies with wide eyes and fright in his mouth. Ain bites into the heart, blood and gore dripping down his mouth. Iron and salt burst inside on his tongue. His eyes flutter shut.

It was delicious.

\-----

The Void is endless. Ain knew. Always knew. Had known. He knows. Everything begins in the Void. Everything ends in the Void. There is only the Void.

Ain screams.

The Void drags it out of his throat, a thousand eyes peering at him in the space between the spaces.

_ Surrender. _

The Void has many hands, slick and black and oily, sliding deep inside his throat, drags his fears and insecurities and stuffs it inside his head like cotton.

_ You failed. _

_ Failure. _

_ Dispensable. _

_ You fail you fail you fail you fail you fail you fail you fail you fail you fail you fail you fail you fail you fail you fail you fail you fail you fail you fail you fail you fail you fail you fail - _

Ain screams.

\-------

Elsword is talking to Ain. Something about Feita.

Feita can burn.

Ain shakes his head and smiles. Yes Elsword, we need to save them. No Elsword, you don’t need to push yourself too hard. And -

And Elsword is walking away, laughing and cheering with Rena and Aisha. Ain calls for him, asks for the boy to wait, reaches with his hand and -

Elsword fades like dust, but the Void is climbing up Ain’s fingers like frostbite.

Ain tries to force his eyes open, but they weren’t shut. There are walls with four corners and five sides, rain falls from the earth and a thousand eyes peer from the skies. Hands pull him down through oil and a thousand lamprey mouths laugh at him.

Ain tries to scratch the corruption away, red and black dripping through his skin. His nails gouge deep through his human shell, sinew and flesh exposed as he tried to dig through the bones. It feels like an ill-fitted suit, made his head feel small and tight, loose and sallow on his torso, every inch an uncomfortable awareness that he is a mass of energy stuffed inside a toy full of cotton. 

He tries to look for the seams where the skin divides him into neat little parts: head, limbs, and torso. There are no seams.

Ain scratches and claws, trying to escape the shell.

There is no escape. Only the Void.

\--------------

The boy is back, smiling and grinning and laughing. His mouth is full of sharp teeth, like a lamprey, dripping with blood and oil.

“You’re dead,” Ain accused, his hands on the boy’s throat. “I killed you.”

“Did you?” the boy laughs and laughs and laughs until he chokes and heaves and pants.

Ain squeezes long and hard. The light in the boy’s eyes are long gone now, and Ain’s nails cut through skin and flesh, exposing sinew and spinal bones. The vocal cords stretch like violin strings and Ain wondered if it can sing.

_ Hungry _ , the Void whispers.  _ Feed us. _

Ain scowls and throws the body away, his gums aching with need and stomach churning in hunger. The emptiness feels endless, and enormous pit that wants all,  _ needs _ all.

The Void screams and shrieks at Ain as he walks away.

_ Feed us! _ The Void demands. Ain ignores it.

The Void beats his mind with its yearning, lights his blood on fire and screams his failures at him.

_ Where is your goddess now? _ It laughs. The Void stretches his body until it snaps, bones crunching and and breaking, entrails falling into a mess into the endless expanse of stars and realms, blood explodes into fine mist, and Ain screams through the pain.

Except he is whole and unharmed and the Void croons forgotten lullabies behind his ears. He sees a world burning, plunged into eternal chaos. Endless battles rage, mortals live and die and reproduce like cattle to feed the Void's hunger, the goddess and the El long forgotten in favour of a mad cycle of destruction and creation, and at the very heart of the storm is Ain - a mad god with a ravenous appetite, palate sated only by chaos.

_ No! _ Ain screams and rages at the Void.  _ This is not what the goddess wants! _

The Void laughs and holds him like an unruly child.  _ Where is your goddess now? Where is she? Call for her and she will not come _ .

Ain begs and prays and supplicates himself before the goddess. She does not answer.

_ Where is she? Where is she? She is not here. She will never come _ .

There is no goddess. Only the Void.

\---------

Ain fights.

He is stuck in an endless loop of battles, facing enemy after enemy long past. He fights with the ferocity of dying men. He scratches with claws, bites into flesh, and uses the bodies of enemies and allies alike as his shield.

He fights like he will die tomorrow, that this is the battle of all battles, then he  _ will  _ return to the goddess's side.

Except there is no goddess.

For every fallen enemy, two takes it place. For every living ally, two falls. Ain fights and fights and fights until he could not tell enemy from friend. All the screams sound the same.

_ “Why?”  _ They ask, betrayal and anger and grief in their find sighs.

Ain does not answer.

\-------

Ain wakes up and he is in camp.

Elsword is staring at him in worry. They're in Velder.

Rena, Raven, Aisha, Eve, and Elesis are all there as well.

“You looked like you were having a bad dream,” was the boy's explanation.

The moon hangs in the sky like a slash of teeth curved into a grin. An endless expanse of stars spreads across the vast emptiness of space.

Ain wonders if the Void was a nightmare, dreamt by his mind as he suffered between humanity and spirituality, no longer a part of both. He looks at his hands and does not see the corruption. The Void is silent, does not plague him with its false whispers. 

There is no Void, only the Goddess.

“I'm fine,” Ain manages to say, smiles with all teeth and empty eyes. “Never been better.”

Elsword, shrugs and smiles, as if there is nothing wrong with the world. “If you say so. Just don't push yourself too hard.”

Ain nods. “Alright, just be careful yourself as well.”

Elsword laughs and then settles back into his cot.

Oh yes, they were camping, Ain remembers, before the Void took him.

Except the Void did not take him. He is fine and the Void was a nightmare.

Perhaps he dreamt of that life, and he simply woke up to this dream of a reality.

In the distance, he sees Velder burn, the fires neverending. He tastes ash and blood at the tip of his tongue, ignores the screams of the dying, does not see empty eyes and gaping mouths splattered with blood.

Ain lies back into his cot and closes his eyes.

He is hungry.

\---------

There is something wrong.

Ain ignores how wrong everything is.

Everything is fake. The skies are mere curtains painted with clouds and the sun. The earth is the stage to some mad play. His friends are marionettes encased in human skin.

Their smiles are empty and forced, their movements too smooth for humans. They do not truly breath, inhales and exhales simulated to imitate life. They follow a script Ain is not privy to.

They are all wrong. There angles too sharp and curves carved like wood. They bleed but it's too red and too thick. Ain swipes a drop of blood from Raven once. It's sweeter than honey.

They whisper behind Ain, jeering at him, laughing at his ignorance. They believe he does not know their secrets, that he does not know that they are mere puppets that follow a puppet master. In hushed whispers, they make their plans to strip him off his skin and expose his weakness, expose his deception. They know he is an angel of the goddess, and they will strip him of the humanity he is gifted with.

Except Ain knows their plans. Ain knows what to do. He will not let them win.

He smiles and nods and laughs with them, hides his own plans and a knife inside his boots. He does not show them that he knows, that he will not surrender.

“You don't look so good,” Elesis mentions once. Ain laughs and tells her he's fine.

She does not believe him, and Ain is ready to slit her throat for knowing too much. Except she nods and lets him be. “Well, whenever you think you're ready to talk about it, we're always here.”

Aim laughs and insists he's fine.

He looks at a mirror and understands why it is hard to believe.

Dark circles surrounds his eyes, and his already pale skin took a sickly tint to it. His veins are stark and blue, contrasts with his pallor. His hair lost its healthy shine, and it's more or less a mane of a mess. His bones feel too sharp and stiff, and he feels exactly like the spirit he was shoved into a vessel of flesh and blood.

“You look horrible,” he tells his reflection. His eyes remain bright, green and reflective. A sharp contrast to his nearly corpse-like appearance. Is this what rigour mortis looks like?

His reflection smiles, with its too white and too sharp teeth. Its grin stretches and stretches and stretches and stretches and bone and teeth and eyes fall apart and black blood drips down the mangled flesh and-

Ain looks at his hands, bleeding and bruised, his reflection split apart into cracks in the glass. A hundred green eyes stare accusingly at him, much like vacous spiders. The eyes blink and smiles with rows and rows of teeth, laughing at him in shrill voices.

_ You fail you fail you fail you fail you fail you fail you fail you fail you fail you fail you fail you fail you fail you fail you fail you fail  _

Ain grinds the mirror into dust. The voices follow him. They sing and croon and scream. They taunt him as he fight, whisper to him the secrets of the universe in long forgotten chants, they demand blood as he laugh and smile with his puppet friends with their secret grins and deceitful masks, their voices are louder than his as he pray for the goddess.

_ There is no goddess. She will _ never _ answer. _

Yes she will. Yes she will. I'm her chosen. Her angel. She will answer. She will answer. She always answers.

_ Where is your goddess now? _

She does not answer.

\------

“What have you done?” Elesis's face is pale a frightened. Blood spatters are all over her clothes and hair. Hard to see with how red they are.

Elsword’s eyes are empty, milky and unseeing. He is cold. His inner flame long quenched. His face is forever frozen in betrayal and terror.

Ain hold Elsword's heart in his hands, chest cavity mangled open and blood spurting like a fountain. 

“I -” Before Ain can speak, Elesis has her sword through his chest. He glances down and then to Elesis’s enraged face. Her eyes are so, so, so red. Like blood.

Ain pulls it out.

Elesis is screaming and Ain-

Wakes up.

His companions sleep peacefully, alive and breathing.

Exhausted, Ain returns to sleep.

His hands are red with blood.

\------

He decides to write in a journal.

If Ain could not trust his memory and perception, then perhaps he will be able to pinpoint which is dream and which is real.

The beings that wore his companions faces laugh and pretend that they find his urge to document their adventures endearing. Ain isn't fooled.

Ain would write short passages in ten minutes. Other times, he will pour over the journal for hours with no end in sight. He writes where none sees, events flowing from ink to paper. 

He does not write about the Void and its whispers.

He does not write about its terrifying visions. Secrets that even he, an angel, could not comprehend. He does not write about cities made only of thought, of events stuck in time, of creatures that are both formless and with of terrifying form. He does not write waking up with blood on his hands and iron and salt thick on his tongue. He does not write of the endless hunger. Ain only writes the truth.

_ I stand in the Void and it shows me the secret to godhood. _

_ I feasted on the flesh of my foes and allies. I have gorged myself in their blood and fat. It does not fill me. _

_ I am. _

Ain did not write these.

Many words fill his journal, disjointed and dream-like. There are entries on days where he did not write. There are more words than it should in some. Other pages are blank. Paragraphs form and continue then suddenly stop. Childish scrawls for help had turned pages black with ink.

There is no difference between reality and nightmare. 

There is only the Void.

Ain burns the journal and its lies.

\------

Ain prays. There is no answer.

He begs. The goddess gives him silence.

He fasts and slits his wrists in supplication. She does not speak.

_ She left you. You only have us. _

The Void holds him as if he is a crying child in need of comfort. It sings to him. It shows him greatness.

Ain closes his eyes. He is tired.

“Yes,” he says, does not understand what he is agreeing to. Yet he knows everything now.

There is no goddess. There is only the Void.

Ain breathes, opens his eyes.

And smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> Is this good enough for you Howard?
> 
> :)


End file.
